![harry connick jr. just the way you are harry connick jr. just the way you are](https://deepestdream.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Winter11.jpg)
But I had no idea that that's how Verve started. This is where I'm on a much lower platform than you. There are many different people that you could focus on for a songbook album, but this is so apt, because the story of Verve begins with Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook in 1956. So when he said "Let's do Cole Porter," I said, "That sounds great." I had recorded a bunch of Cole tunes before, and obviously was very familiar with his music, but this was a legitimate, deep journey into this guy's brain, which I hadn't done. It doesn't really matter to me, because I'm so passionate about all these things. I want to make a New Orleans traditional album, I want to make a ballads album, I want to do all originals, I want to do another New Orleans funk album, I could do a gospel album." Among the choices, I said: "I want to do a Cole Porter tribute album," and his eyes kind of lit up. So when I met with him, he said, "What do you have in mind?" I said "Man, there's so many records I want to make. He's the guy who asked me if I would be interested in coming over there, because I had been with Columbia for a really long time. But I'll tell you what happened: I went in to meet with Danny Bennett, who was the head of Verve when I first started there.
![harry connick jr. just the way you are harry connick jr. just the way you are](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8RGmSxVGzk8/maxresdefault.jpg)
I guess I could have made this album, easily, 20 years ago. The problem with making records is, you have to pick. Harry Connick, Jr.: I don't think it could've happened before, only because I wasn't really interested in doing it before. doing a Cole Porter songbook album feels like something that should have happened a long time ago.
![harry connick jr. just the way you are harry connick jr. just the way you are](https://direct.rhapsody.com/imageserver/images/alb.282146/500x500.jpg)
NPR Music: The idea of Harry Connick, Jr. At 52, he retains the boyish enthusiasm that helped make him a household name, along with his New Orleans drawl. While making True Love, Connick came to realize just how deeply deserved that reputation is, and how much nuance is needed to do justice to the material.Ĭonnick talked about those welcome discoveries - and about balancing artistic ambition with commercial appeal, and the puzzle of orchestrating Porter's music, and much else besides - during a phone interview from his home in Connecticut. But Connick has plenty of experience with Porter, whose blend of musical polish and wry lyrical sophistication made him a gold standard in the firmament of American popular song. There were no Cole Porter songs on When Harry Met Sally., which went double platinum and won Connick his first of his three Grammy awards. And he's now in residence on a proper stage - at the Nederlander Theatre, performing songs from the album in a Broadway show that he conceived and directed, and of which he's naturally the star. Connick's first vocal entrance - on " It Had to Be You," set up by a momentous orchestral overture - conveyed all the ritual glamour of a leading man stepping from behind a curtain onto a proscenium stage.Ĭonnick has a spruce new album, True Love: A Celebration of Cole Porter (Verve), that extends the sound and spirit of those early songbook triumphs. If you know Connick at all, you might remember that album, When Harry Met Sally., as some kind of watershed: a burnished vision of New York sophistication that renewed the American songbook for a dashing new cohort.
#HARRY CONNICK JR. JUST THE WAY YOU ARE MOVIE#
became an improbable pop star, on the basis of a movie soundtrack that just happened to put many of his best features on display. It has been 30 years since Harry Connick, Jr.